Adopted by an 86% majority of its members on 31 August 2025, the resolution on the situation in Gaza by the International Association of Genocide Scholars takes on particular importance at a time when we are witnessing unspeakable horrors that defy any criminal definition of international law, alongside the position of the international community of states and the leaders of their institutions who openly discuss the appropriateness of the term ‘genocide’.
The document is strictly technical and neutral. It accurately describes the events referred to since 7 October 2023, along with their definitions, while avoiding any distracting elements (such as the strictly political-ideological connotation of ‘terrorism’). It makes all events that can and must be considered crimes beyond reasonable doubt visible and recognisable, in terms of responsibility for commission or omission. The increasing severity of the sequence and the coexistence of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide are accurately associated with specific individuals, causes, instruments and statements of an exclusively factual nature.
Setting aside any political considerations or contextualisation, the situation in Gaza is a prime example of genocide from a legal standpoint, given the scale and severity of the data, contextual evidence and personal behaviour.
In this sense, it is also important to cite and use documentation confirming and supporting the judgment produced and published on this subject by international organisations, NGOs, and Israeli media outlets, rather than using it as a structural component of the judgment itself. This strictly ‘legal’ opinion, with its authority, confirms that analyses, investigations, assessments and facts which have entered the global information circuit coincide in forming a judgement that is absolutely consistent and transversal to the most diverse states regarding the genocidal policy of the State of Israel and its military and civilian leaders.
It is important to note that any use of Hamas as a justification for Israel’s behaviour is explicitly excluded. It is the life, culture and history of the Palestinian people that are specifically targeted for genocide.
In line with its technical objectives, the IASG resolution concludes with a request for intervention by ad hoc bodies in accordance with international law, beginning with the international courts that have already issued their judgements.
It is perhaps in this conclusion that the ‘technical’ document most explicitly reveals its deeper meaning: it denounces the capacity and persistence of the current political system’s planned deception, with regard to its specific task of using the law to serve people’s interests, and not as an excuse to guarantee impunity, leaving the life and present and future identity of a people to the completion of their genocide.
The technical formulation of the definition of the ‘crime that should never happen again’ was primarily intended to prevent it from happening again. Instead, the crime has been repeated in the most exemplary manner; we are all spectators and witnesses, and even accountability is unimaginable. Impunity for those in power is the norm. The technical observation is clear: the human identity of the international community of states has been buried, expelled and denied. There is no prospect of recovery among the ruins of Gaza. The report’s lines dedicated to the countless victims, especially children, who ‘inhabit’ the ruins and land of Gaza forever reveal at least some emotion beneath the objectivity of the denunciation.
A news item is neither the place nor the tool for commenting on current events. The TPP General Secretariat expressed its opinion some time ago. However, it is worth noting that the IASG report is being published on the same day that the Global Samud Flotilla is departing from Barcelona and Genoa. We do not know what will happen. But it already constitutes a clear judgement, not only of ‘never again’, but also of the future, on the part of the peoples. As with the peace movement at the beginning of this century, which opposed the legalisation of war, the peoples around the world have once again reiterated that Gaza’s right to life and dignity is inextricably linked to their own, and that complicit and silent governments share responsibility with the Netanyahu and Trump administrations.
We can only hope that IASG’s legitimacy will help turn the words that currently replace politics and civilisation for Gaza into reality. We can only hope that the freedom and creativity of FSG will symbolise and embody how the Palestinian people can become a laboratory for a right based on the lives and identities of peoples.
Gianni Tognoni, Secretary General